Aw, man, there's a new Thor movie? I wonder what it'll be about?
I mean, they've already had him fighting Loki and the Dark Elves
What could possibly be next? Oh, I know maybe they'll mention that time that Thor nuked China
Maybe they'll tell the story of that time that Thor helped Hitler kill Stalin, Yeah!
Those are the MCU movies that I'd be really interested to see.
Hello Internet, Welcome to Film Theory
The show that keeps digging until it finds the stuff that everyone else is hoping you forget.
So after ruining Ant-Man and Spider Man , I figured it was time for a change.
Time to tackle a Superhero who isn't themed after something you crush under your boot.
That's right. Today, we're talking Thor Ragnarok
And I'm happy to report that my shameless groveling at the feet of Disney
Did finally get me into an early preview of one of their movies.
Have no fear, today's theory is a hundred percent spoiler free.
Now in the latest trailer for Thor Ragnarok, they tease a moment that served as a running joke for the movie.
"Voice activation required." "Thor"
"Strongest Avenger"
"Let me try. Banner"
"Welcome, strongest Avenger"
"Uh, what?"
Thor consistently claims that is the strongest Avenger, but gets undermined time and time again by the Hulk.
It's hilarious, and it also got me thinking.
Of the two, Who would be the stronger Avenger?
Obviously the Quinn jet computer has been programmed to think that Hulk is the strongest, But Thor is literally a god.
So shouldn't he win the title? Stan Lee certainly seems to think so.
In a radio interview asking about who would win in a fight, Stan went on record to say,
"I would have to say Thor because, as strong as Hulk is he's still a mortal, but Thor is one of the Norse gods"
So who's right here. Does Stan Lee truly know his own creation,
or will we prove today that he's more out of touch than a parent trying to
understand what a Ricegum is. Is Thor right to feel slighted by the computer,
Or is it just stating a fact that this arrogant Asgardian refuses to accept?
It's time to settle this superhuman grudge match once and for all with the greatest superpower of them all:
Research.
First, let me make it clear:
I want to determine who is literally the strongest, not who would win in a fight since that involves strategy and fighting techniques.
I'm talking pound for pound who is physically stronger. Who's able to lift more and punch harder, so let's start at the very beginning,
which I hear is a very good place to start:
The comics. Across their mutual fifty-five year history, these two Goliath's have gone toe-to-toe a lot.,
so maybe by seeing who wins in these fights more often we can start to figure out who is the stronger Superhero
Their first fight,
1963's Avengers No. 3. No clear winner. Okay, their second fight,
1965's Journey into Mystery No. 112. No clear winner. Okay, third time's a charm,
1971's The Submariner 35. No clear winner. Defenders 10. Draw. Incredible Hulk 300.
Draw. Mighty Thor 489. Draw. By this point you might be noticing a pattern
The comics want to keep the winner of this battle more vague than a Scott Cawthon storyline.
In nearly every matchup the two either stalemate each other,
or the US government comes in and drops a nuke to stop the two from fighting.
That's your taxpayer dollars at work Ladies and Gentlemen.
However, There are a few pieces of evidence we can use, hidden across these battles.
In 1987's Mighty Thor No. 385, Hulk repeatedly says that Thor can't beat him without his hammer.
Thor denies it and throws his hammer away twice during the battle,
But it's only once Mjolnir is back in play that he's able to topple the Hulk.
That wouldn't mean much on its own,
But in 2011's Fear Itself No. 5, Thor confesses that he could never beat Hulk
And it doesn't seem like he's exaggerating either.
In 2012's Hulk smash Avengers No. 1, all the Avengers
Collectively work together to try and hold the Hulk down,
with Thor using the handle of Mjolnir to pin Hulk's neck.
Hulk sends them all flying, giving us our first true piece of evidence that, in the moment,
He was stronger than Thor as well as all the other Avengers combined.
Then again, we are talking about a guy who is canonically defeated by a strategic box of puppies.
So the title of strongest Avenger might not be as prestigious as it might initially sound.
Okay, so their head-to-head battles might be a draw,
But what about comparing their relative feats of strength?
During Marvel's Secret Wars 4, a cosmic entity known as the Beyonder sends a number of heroes and villains
to an artificial planet to battle.
At one point, the Beyonder drops a Mountain range on them
and our not so Jolly Green Giant literally shoulders the burden while the others plan their escape.
The mountain range is confirmed to be two miles tall.
Two miles of pure rock tall, and the cover itself says that it weighs 150 billion tons.
That is three times ten to the 14th power pounds of rock on his shoulders which is incredible,
But not nearly as incredible as what we see in the Incredible Hulk 102,
Where he pulls a planet back together, with his bare hands.
He literally grabs two tectonic plates and yanks them back together.
My favorite part of this comic by the way, is the explanation for this.
"He...he shifted the plates." "Of course he did, he's the Hulk."
Considering the weight of the Earth's crust is about 6,200 times 10 to the 19th pounds,
and there are about 15 major tectonic plates on earth, each of those plates Hulk is moving is going to add up to
about 4.1 sextillion pounds,
and he's moving two of them with his bare hands.
Good luck standing up to that one Thor.
Except he does. It seems like he can stand toe-to-toe against this number.
In Thor 272, Thor and Loki encountered the giant Utgard
who challenges the Asgardians to some rather unique challenges, one of which is to lift his cat.
No, no you heard that right. Lift a cat.
And you all thought that the plot of dark world was bad.
Look at the source material they're working with here, people. In all seriousness,
This story is based on Norse mythology and as you may expect the cat isn't
Actually a cat in both the comic and the myth the cat is actually revealed to be a disguised Midgard serpent
That probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you.
Don't worry, it didn't mean a whole lot to me either.
The serpent is actually a massive snake also known as Jormungandr
Jormungandr
JORMUNGANDR
whose sole purpose is encircling the planet and destroying it.
Who's a bad kitty snake? No treats for you. Get in the corner.
More importantly for our purposes, Jörmungandr is massively heavy. Although we don't ever get an exact weight for the serpent,
we know that it has the mass necessary to surround the entire Earth and destroy it.
The force that it would take to destroy Earth,
according to people who have spent a great deal of time thinking about destroying the Earth,
would be about 2.2 4 times 10 to the 24th pounds of force
Although Thor fails the test he does manage to lift one of the cat's legs off the ground.
A feat that is apparently impressive to Utgard the Giant.
I don't know, I pick up all four of Skip's legs all the time
And he's getting fatter by the day.
Anyway that means Thor is exerting the equivalent of five septillion pounds of force,
a full three more digits than Hulk pulling tectonic plates
So maybe Thor and Stan Lee are right to think that Thor is in fact the strongest Avenger
But here's the thing. Comics are weird.
I mean we just talked about how Thor's strongest feat in the comics is getting a single cat paw off the ground
Strength scaling in the comics is very different from strength scaling in the movies
and honestly, this is Film Theory.
I'm more interested in the movies anyway
And the MCU operates by a different standard
A world where Thor isn't a Hitler supporter.
As Stan Lee said, in the comic universe Thor is literally a god
But in the MCU Odin makes a point to make it clear that they're not gods. They're mortals just like us
"We are not gods"
"We're born"
"We live. We die, as humans do."
"Give or take five thousand years"
And while Asgardians have proven themselves to be quite handy in the MCU like in the original Thor
"There you go, lass"
It now puts him in a completely different vein as the Asgardians from earth-616
That's the main Marvel Comics universe for those of you who are unaware of top-level geek speak.
So to get our final answer, let's focus on moments of strength from the movies to determine whether
Ragnarok's computer is just a big troll.
Our first baseline measurement is Iron Man across the 17 films of the MCU at this point,
we've seen Tony Stark take on both Hulk and Thor
So the relative performance against him will be a good benchmark
The battle against Thor happens in the original Avengers movie.
During the battle Thor uses his lightning powers to zap the Iron Man suit,
which has the reverse effect he wanted and charges the armor up to
475 percent power
"Power at four hundred percent capacity"
"How about that?"
You sure about that Jarvis?
Then why does it say four seventy-five on Tony's readout? Anyway, Iron Man comes out of this battle alive
Sure, you could say Thor may have been holding back
But he was at minimum trying to stop Tony and ultimately failed.
Compare that now to Hulk vs Iron Man in age of Ultron. Here, Tony uses his special
Hulk-buster armor, a suit that is powered by
11 reactor cores. Even with 11 times the output of one normal suit Tony still couldn't overpower Hulk
"Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep!"
So we got to give the point to Hulk.
[Ding]
And then what about Hulk and Thor's first cinematic battle?
Here's Thor struggling to hold back Hulk's one arm
But then here's footage of Thor completely destroying Hulk mere seconds later with Mjolnir,
which is something we haven't taken into consideration yet.
The Hammer.
Why are we spending so much time calculating and comparing,
when, shouldn't Mjolnir give us our answer outright? Thor can lift Mjolnir when no one else can,
Thus he should be the strongest right? Well, not exactly.
You see, if this were the comics that might be the case.
Comic book Mjolnir has a specific mechanism by which it works,
As unworthy people attempt to lift it it starts to gain mass
That leaves open the slim but very real possibility of someone else being able to lift it.
In fact, Hulk is able to. The hammer gains mass slower than Hulk gains strength as he increasingly
Gets more angry trying to lift the darn thing. His strength eventually
Overtakes it and he becomes one of the few to be able to wield Mjolnir
In the MCU, however, we know mjolnir
Isn't actually based on weight, but rather on Odin's enchantment?
"Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy shall possess the power of Thor."
It's not an issue of mass but rather
worthiness. the hammer allows itself to be lifted by those deemed worthy.
When Thor was on the naughty list,
He couldn't budge the thing. It's only after he's back on the nice list that he's able to lift it again.
So ability to pick up Mjolnir is a moot point.
But the hammer itself can help us crown our final winner.
Back in the Avengers Thor goes toe to toe with the big guy and
Isn't holding himself back. After Mjolnir knocks Hulk down Hulk attempts to pick it up and retaliate
But learns as we all know that the owner will only move for those that are deemed worthy.
The result is Hulk pulling on it with all his might and then this
I don't remember his feet sinking into any rock.
After doing some calculations on the size of Hulk's feet,
and the strength of the tarmac on the S.H.E.I.L.D ship. To dig himself into a floor like this,
Hulk would have had to output three million seven hundred sixty eight
Thousand pounds of force to dent the asphalt floors, per individual foot.
Now compare that to Thor's big moment of strength from the movies,
Crushing Iron Man's arm.
At the end of the original Iron Man, Tony corrects a little fallacy about his suit:
"It's not technically accurate you see it's a gold-titanium alloy..."
He's not Iron Man, he's gold titanium alloy man.
In 2016, a team at Rice University
Discovered a real gold titanium alloy that was four times harder than steel.
Four times. According to Wikipedia, structural steel can take a force of about
36 thousand psi
Before it begins to fall or break.
So that would mean an alloy four times the strength could take about a hundred and forty four
thousand pounds of pressure per square inch
In order for a hand about the size of Thor's to output that same level of pressure to crush Iron Man's gauntlet
It would translate to three million four hundred fifty six
thousand pounds of force
Three hundred thousand pounds of force under what we know holds output of one foot to be
So any way you slice it, Stan Lee is just outright wrong.
It's easy to assume that a god-like superhero would be the most overpowered,
but most of that is coming from Mjolnir itself
What Ragnarok plays as a joke at Thor's expense is
Just factually true
Based on what's said in the comics, their feats of strength,
logical comparisons, and just flat-out math and science.
There is no denying that Hulk is the strongest Avenger
Well, until we factor vision into all this, then Hulk better start watching out. But Hey,
That's just a theory!
A Film Theory.
Aaaand, Cut